From Manhattan with Revenge (The Fourth Book in the Fifth Avenue Series) (19 page)

“My deformed fingers. Is that also
supposed to make me feel better?”

“It’s meant to give you a sense of scope.
You’ve had a good ride. You can still enjoy more years, especially if you find
a new reason to get up in the morning. A new kind of career.”

He consulted other doctors, but to his
disappointment, they all agreed. Surgery would be the end of him. He’d die on a
table with one of his titanium hips already removed, but instead of putting it
back properly inside his corpse, he knew how it worked. They’d just shove it
back inside improperly and sew him up, regardless of how bad it looked.

For Gelling, who had very specific plans
for his own funeral and burial, to the point that he hired a theatrical agency
to plant nine character actresses of various ages along the periphery of his grand
mahogany casket, where they would weep for him when he went into the hole, the
thought of going into the dirt with such a disfigurement repelled him.

When he finally decided to give himself
over to life in a wheelchair, he bought the top-of-the-line turbo model he used
now. And then he rethought his life.

What were his passions? What did he want
to do before he died? It was when his longtime acquaintance Babe McAdoo called
to ask him for a favor, which involved tracking down a man she knew he knew through
mutual friends, that he started to suspect things about her that he couldn’t
have known when the man was found beheaded days later.

It was an event that made international
news because of who the man was. Over drinks, which he demanded she share with
him, he learned of her “secret life,” as she called it, which stunned him, but
which he found rife with excitement.

“You know a lot of people,” Babe said to
him. “More than anyone I know, really, including me, which is saying plenty.
And you’ve always had an inquisitive mind. You’re good with puzzles and you
understand the human mind in ways that most don’t because of your medical
background and your longtime practice. You could still be an asset to certain
people I know. And you could do it all from that chair.”

Before she left, he was sold on the idea.
And his life, at ninety-six, began anew with a string of thrilling adventures
he never dreamt of having in his townhouse off Park, which had been streamlined
and decluttered to accommodate the wheelchair.

When he was feeling good, as he was today
because of how he’d helped Carmen, he sometimes zipped around his apartment, as
if he were the boy he used to be. What did he have to lose? His body may have
failed him years ago, but Gelling’s sense of adventure never had left him, even
if it was only racing around his townhouse’s fourth floor at speeds that Frank
often paled at because he worried that the chair might topple over, regardless
of the fun Gelling was having.

Gelling sat in his chair and listened to
the house. His ears weren’t what they used to be, but they weren’t bad, and if
he were a betting man, which he was, he’d wager that he heard Frank in the
kitchen downstairs, probably fixing himself the turkey sandwich he usually had
around this time of day.

Knowing that Frank would scold him but not
really caring, Gelling looked to his right and saw the long gleaming hallway
that led out of the fourth-floor room he’d turned into his second parlor. In
his condition, it was more convenient to have another parlor on the fourth
floor, where he lived, than on the first floor, where he rarely spent his time.

He listened to the house again, heard
nobody on the stairs and then, with a smile, he propelled the wheelchair
forward.

The chair was fast and robust. Soon, he was
free, racing from room to room, hallway to hallway, at such speeds that he
couldn’t help a laugh and a gasp. He cut around tables and furniture, nearly
toppled over, but somehow righted himself and went forward faster and faster,
his usually pale face flushed pink with grinning excitement until the
wheelchair malfunctioned.

It all happened so quickly, Gelling wasn’t
sure what to do as he raced down the long hallway that opened into the parlor,
which dead-ended at a large French window that overlooked East Sixty-First
Street, just off Park, four stories below.

While trying to steer in a straight line
so he wouldn’t topple over, Gelling yanked back on the handle, which was stuck
in its forward position and thus shooting him forward.

The fourth-floor parlor was a large room,
about fifty feet long, but Gelling already was past the halfway mark and he
wasn’t strong enough at this speed to do anything more than to watch the
inevitable bloom before him.

So, this was it. His death wouldn’t be
natural, as he always thought it would be. He wasn’t going to open his eyes one
morning and realize that the white ceiling actually was a bright light that
opened into another world. He wasn’t going to slump over dead in his chair
while sipping his soup. He wasn’t going to expire from the sheer embarrassment
of watching Frank wipe his ass and change his diaper, which he detested and
caused him great stress.

Instead, his death ironically was going to
end with great disfigurement, just as it might have if his hips and knees had
been replaced, as he had wished.

The idea of disfigurement was something he
couldn’t bear, but with death so close, he knew it was the case. The wheelchair
slammed against the bottom of the window, catapulted him through the glass and
into the open air, which felt so cold to him, it was as biting as everything
now happening to him.

At that moment, when he was airborne, his
body so rigid from age that he couldn’t lift his hands in front of his face to
keep it from directly connecting with the sidewalk, James Gelling shit his
pants a final time, a further humiliation met at life’s end. He shouted out for
Frank, such a gem, whom he was sad he wouldn’t see again.

And then it was over.

While people stopped on the sidewalk to
shriek or to stand transfixed in horror or to turn away for the same reason, he
became an unfortunate part of the pavement, with Carmen’s list of names left
behind him on his desk.

CHAPTER TW
ENTY-FOUR

Carmen sat with Babe and Jake in the
parlor, occasionally checking her watch, worried beyond worried for Chloe, but
trying to keep her emotions in check so she could stay focused and resolve the
issue when she had the opportunity to do so.

The hour they’d given Katzev to respond
had dwindled by half. There’d been no response from the man who held Chloe
captive and whose family’s welfare was on the line because of it.

“What’s taking him so long?” Babe asked.

“He’s playing the game, Babe. He’s making
us sweat. But he’ll call. Just a matter of time.”

Five minutes later, the cell phone she
held in her lap buzzed. All looked at Carmen, who looked down in surprise to
see that it was Spocatti calling.

“It’s Vincent,” she said. She clicked on
the phone and held the receiver to her ear. “This is Carmen.”

“So formal,” Spocatti said. “This is
Vincent.”

She could hear the distinct rumblings of a
plane. “Where are you?” she asked.

“On my way to New York.”

“You’re coming here?”

“I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“What for?”

“To help you. I contacted Katzev. I
understand you’ve given him one hour to offer up this Chloe girl you’re so
concerned about, but I need you to back off.”

“Why?”

“I’m not asking you to back off forever,
Carmen. Just until I get there. Then, in exchange for the safety of his family,
he’s agreed to release Chloe and let her go. Turns out sending Liam there was
the right thing to do—Katzev is shaken. He’s agreed to meet at a neutral
place, still unannounced by him, but which we’ll both agree upon soon. He will
come with the girl and one of his men. Both Katzev and the other man will be
armed. I told him that I would arrive only with you, and that we also would be
armed. So, at the very least, when it comes to artillery, we’re even.”

“If we can trust him, which is a stretch.”

“I think we can, but you’re
right—we’ll never know. That said, I heard his voice. He knows you’re
serious. He especially doesn’t want anything to happen to his mother. I don’t
think he cares much for the others, but his mother does mean something to him.
She’s the one he wants to protect.”

It’s what Carmen sensed. “So, Chloe’s
safe,” she said. “What happens to me?”

“That’s where things get sketchy.”

“How?”

“We’ll all be armed, Carmen. The mood will
be tense. I don’t know what he’ll do, but you need to keep your eyes on him
throughout the process and be prepared for him to shoot you, because he will if
he has the chance. If you sense that he or his man are about to go for their
guns, you shoot them. Period. If they don’t, we’ll back out of there. I’ll also
be watching him. Together, we can take him out if he tries something stupid,
but there are consequences if we do. When they learn of Katzev’s death, the
syndicate will put all of their resources into tracking us down and killing us.
We will be their number-one priority. They won’t allow two of their chief
members to be murdered by anyone, especially since they’re convinced you have
dirt on them. It will be war. If it happens, we’ll need to seek out each member
and end this for good.”

“Why are you doing this, Vincent?”

“Doing what?”

“Helping me and Chloe when you yourself
will become a target?”

“Because I want to.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Carmen, you’ve come to mean something to
me. I know the risks. I’ve made my decision. Would you rather I step out of
it?”

“No.”

“All right, then.”

“I think I might have an edge when it
comes to learning who’s in the syndicate,” Carmen revealed.

“How?”

She thought of her conversation with
Gelling. If he pulled through for her with their names, addresses, and whatever
else he could find out about them, the balance would shift in her favor. The
syndicate either would have to back down or risk death or exposure.

“I’ll tell you when you get here. And,
Vincent, I have to reiterate, the syndicate is my problem, not yours. I’ll take
them out. There’s no need for you to risk your life for me.”

“I don’t offer assistance to just anyone,
Carmen. Especially for free. Just like you, I’ve worked with the syndicate for
years. They’ve grown too powerful. They’ve become arrogant, which is dangerous.
I think it’s time to end them before they end us, as they started to do with
Alex, and now with you and Jake. Who knows? I hardly walk on water. I might be
next.”

“All right,” she said. “But hear me on
this. They’re responsible for Alex’s death. If only for him and also because of
what he’s done to Chloe, I want the pleasure of taking out Katzev myself.”

“He’s yours. But we both know that if you
go for Katzev, his guard will go after us.”

“I don’t see that as a problem.”

“I do. We don’t know how skilled he is.
We’ll need to act swiftly.”

“Call me when you arrive?”

“I will. This ends tonight. By the time I
land, Katzev and I will have agreed upon a location. Let Babe and Jake know
I’ll be coming by to pick you up, and only you. They’ll be disappointed, but
those are the terms.”

“Understood.”

“And Carmen,” Spocatti said, a new note to
his voice.

“Yes?”

“This all could go wrong in ways that
neither of us expected or wanted. I want you to know that no matter what
happens, I’ve always admired you.”

* * *

Moments later, when Carmen delivered the
news that Babe and Jake were out and that she’d be proceeding alone with
Spocatti, who was en route to New York as they spoke, Babe’s butler Max entered
the room with unusual haste and bent down to Babe’s ear, where he whispered
something Carmen couldn’t hear.

Babe looked up at him. Her jaw dropped.
“No,” she said.

Carmen watched the woman’s face go pale.

“I’m afraid so, ma’am.”

“But it can’t be.”

“What’s the problem?” Carmen asked.

“It’s Gelling,” Babe said. “Terrible
accident. Just terrible.”

“What happened?”

“Somehow, he went through his fourth-story
window.
 
People on the sidewalk saw
him smash through it.”

“What are you talking about? Is he all
right?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said.
“Gelling isn’t all right at all. He shot through the window, fell to the
sidewalk and now he’s dead. Poor Gelling is dead. Max just saw it on CNN.”

Carmen sank back in her chair. Beyond the
fact that she had grown fond of Gelling, whatever information he’d culled that
afternoon on the syndicate had died along with him. It was her one trump card
against Katzev, that one thing she knew she could use against him if the
situation called for it, which she knew it would.